An historic and much overdue ruling came out of Wales recently where the Equality and Human Rights Commission ruled the Safer Wales run Dyn Project should cease in discriminating against male victims of domestic violence. The “helpline” had previously screened male callers in order to determine whether they were perpetrators, thus refusing to believe them. No such screening of of female callers by similar taxpayer funded services took place, thus demonstrating undeniable sexism against men.

Feminists are rightly ridiculed for their insistence that police, courts, juries and society as a whole should “believe the victim” and thus automatically assume guilt the moment anyone alleges abuse. However, arguably the one and only place where “believe the victim” could be appropriate is for a service such as a domestic violence helpline, where the impartially required from the police and justice system is not necessary.

The hypocrisy of feminists who throw their “believe the victim” rhetoric out the window the moment the victim is male and perpetrator is female is of course unsurprising, but of course they’re going further than that. They’re not simply being sceptical of men who seek help, they’re assuming the worst and of the impression that men seeking help are not merely liars, but also abusers and criminals themselves!

You’d have thought blatantly misandrist illegal sex discrimination by taxpayer funded services would have been stopped by a body such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission long ago, but they’ve actually been fully supportive of sexism against men. The EHRC in Wales previously stated it was it was essential to “screen” male callers to determine whether they were “genuine”. Thankfully, after campaigning by the likes of Welsh Assembly Member Mark Drakeford and Anne O’Regan they’re taken legal advice and realised the error of their ways, but it’s most concerning that such a body openly supports sexism against men until finally forced to see sense and actually do their jobs in enforcing equality law.

The sexist policy was also defended by arguing “women comprise the overwhelming majority of victims of domestic abuse”. This is of course utterly false and its’ most ironic that those who accuse male victims of lying about abuse are in fact the ones guilty of such lies themselves! Don’t take our word for it either, an official ruling by Sir Michael Scholar of the UK Statistics Authority adjudged this exact statement to be false in 2009 on two separate occasions. The authority instructed both the Crown Prosecution Service and also the Welsh Government to stop spreading the lie back in 2009.

The UK Statistics Authority stated that such text is “inconsistent with the evidence” on the matter and that a “substantial” proportion of victims are men.

As a result both bodies had to remove it from official documents. its notable that this was a time when the number of male victims coming forward was lower than today, and thus it’s even more inexcusable and a fraudulent defence.

The case of the Dyn Project isn’t an isolated one. The very same illegal phenomenon occurs in England and Scotland with the misandrist “Men’s Advice Line” also screening callers. Their conduct is even worse, with MAL not only assuming many male victims to be liars, but combining this with a blatant conflict of interest too. The parent organisation of the Men’s Advice Line is “Respect” whose core business is running perpetrator programmes for men who commit domestic violence (and not women of course). Thus it’s in the interest of MAL to find””lying” male victims who they insist are perpetrators who can be then put on lucrative perpetrator programmes run by the parent organisation.

Looking at the the bigger picture here, beyond the breaches of equality law and this is simply a massive scandal and should be headline news everywhere instead of relegated to one regional Welsh newspaper. Male victims of domestic violence are the most marginalised, the most discriminated against and have next to no assistance available such as shelters, despite now numbering 700,000 annually. Understandably, male victims of abuse feel they won’t be believed and are the least likely to come forward and report abuse, and yet when they finally gain the courage to call these taxpayer funded “helplines” they face yet more hostility and people who are officially instructed not to believe them either! Just imagine calling a helpline for the first item only to realise they person “helping” you thinks you’re the guilty one and wants to refer you to a perpetrator programme instead. It’s obscene.

There’s very real consequences to this screening too. For example a briefing paper produced by Respect for a debate on violence against men in the Scottish Parliament stated:

“A significant number of men calling the Men’s Advice Line who initially identify as victims change their own identification by the end of the call or provide information about the violence in their relationships which strongly suggests that they are either not a victim or in fact are the perpetrator.”

So we have a taxpayer funded organisation not only refusing to believe male victims, but then using their supposed “evidence” of men “lying” to advocate in Parliament against helping and believing men. The statement in question was read out in full by anti-male Labour MSP Bill Butler during the debate, and he was rightly labelled as “shameful” by MSP Mike Rumbles for doing so. The following year MSP Alex Neil also condemned the Men’s Advice Line in a document outlining concerns about those looking “for reasons to undermine the claim of abused men and their children for equality of recognition and support.”

Surely, the real question here is surely why on earth do we spend taxpayer funds on services who aren’t merely failing those they’re supposed to help, but who are ideologically opposed to even believing what they say to such an extent that they want to turn reality on its head? When did you ever hear of any organisation tasked with helping a particular group instead going out of their way to manufacture and disseminate “statistics” on just how many of those they help are liars, frauds and actually criminals themselves? Some feminist organisations refuse to believe that phenomena such as false rape accusations even exist, let alone documenting, inventing and exaggerating them.

Furthermore, whilst wasting taxpayer money on these failing misandrist services, we simultaneously deny funding to the legitimate organisations out there who genuinely care about male victims such as the Mankind Initiative, an organisation yet to receive a single penny of government money in its 16 year history, despite clearly being the leading advocates for male victims of domestic violence in the UK. We should defund those bodies who don’t want to help victims, stop wasting money, stop harming victims and instead give support to those who actually want to help victims of abuse and treat everyone equally regardless of their gender.

We’ll be writing to the EHRC in regard to the Men’s Advice to see if they’ve ended their illegal practice of screening male victims. and encourage others to do likewise. One has to wonder if the failure to provide perpetrator programmes for female abusers is illegal too? It would also be nice if the blatant lie about the proportion of male victims was retracted too, though at present we’re unsure whether it came from the EHRC or Safer Wales / The Dyn Project.

The last time I checked, the man running The Dyn Project had formerly worked for Women’s Aid, and spouted their propaganda to a Welsh Assembly inquiry, whilst sat next to Mark Brooks of the Mankind Initiative. Disgraceful.

Even if it was true that the ‘overwhelming majority’ of DV victims were true, what relevance would that have for men calling the helplines? I assume the overwhelming majority of the callers are white, so would the people on the helplines suspect BME callers of being liars? Also, how do they determine which of the men who call, are liars? Perhaps if they admit to ever hitting their partners, maybe in self-defence, they instantly become THE perpetrator, and their partner the victim? You have to wonder how many men treated this way by feminist-run DV helplines end up committing suicide.

I would say that this seismic result that Anne OâRegan and Neil McEvoy have achieved cannot be overestimated.

The result is tangible, practical and far reaching in its implications â it even helps to undermine the Feminist multi-million pound DV industry that is essential to supporting their hate, delusion and greed.

A fantastic result and achievement and reported in a measured and effectively presented piece.

It is not malice, though. Even some of the most feminist-skeptic people I know readily dismiss any claims that male DV victimisation pose a systemic problem at all, let alone as many as half of all instances. Besides, feminists – and most of society – look at the higher echelons of power and see all dark suits. Because we rely on instinct rather than reflection, the mere thought that men would require any additional support is ludicrous. If anything, it is in countries with strong feminist presence that there is any support at all. I would wager there is no hotline for male victims in Saudi Arabia.

While I share your antipathy to feminism, I think the antagonism is misplaced here. Far more daunting than the feminist focus on female victims, which strikes most people as common sense and justified, is the societal undervaluation of male victimisation and the corresponding overvaluation of male perpetration and agency more broadly. Feminism make be riding the wave of this kind of social conservatism, but they did not create the wave.

Rather, we have to become better at explaining why in the world we do so little to help men if mostly men are in power. The answer, of course, is gender roles. Take the feminist narrative on this issue just a bit further, and it becomes abundantly clear why this is the case.

That is why I find it sad that we so readily dismiss, wholesale, the feminist narrative. The recent focus on “problems” such as society not appreciating “real men” anymore (palpable even to me, a gay non-gender conforming man, when friends who loosely know I support men’s rights send me articles about Putin celebrating Russian manhood and goes out in the forest to scream, bare-chested), only fans the false narrative that MRM is reactionary. Whereas in fact by second-guessing the undervaluation of male victimhood it is, if anything, hyperprogressive and fully in line with feminist scholarship on the issue (though not in line with the myopic conclusions it draws from them).

And yet the gender role perspective explains almost all of the common MRM gripes, as well as the inability of our society to come to terms with them.

Warren Farrell’s “The Myth of Male Power” was of course essentially taking the feminist theory to its logical conclusions for men. He has remained true to this analysis as have many others. Yet is attacked and vilified. Personally I think you’re right to point out that feminist theory and quite a bit of its academic research in fact supports “mens rights” positions. Often the “popular” feminists are themselves ignorant of their “own” theory. In its popular “political” manifestations it is in fact a revisiting of the most traditional of social values the protection and care of women and children. A point I was reminded of last night in a programme last night about Herculaneum, where the “women and children first” social convention is graphically demonstrated by the distribution of the bodies; as the presenter observed reflecting the gentlemanly behaviour shown nearly 2000 years later on the Titanic. Personally I think the most that can be achieved is legal and “state” equity with the deep rooted social values taking much longer to shift.
The shock of the industrial revolution drove much of the agenda of “sexist” legislation and codification that characterised the Victorian era (such as the “Birkenhead Drill” followed on the Titanic). It is fascinating to me the similarities between much of what calls itself feminism and the preoccupations of the usually Christian women’s societies and clubs of the Victorian Bourgeoisie which generated most of the “benign sexism” we still see.

Our society is very sick.
When you attribute greater value to the loss of life from one person to the next based on specifically gender you know it’s seriosly unwell.
I can understand making children a priority however our society is so sick it even extends into this.

I think women are not use to seeing men fighting back. Check out this blog. Some interesting stuff about the Weisntsein scandal, women don’t belong in the workplace argument. http://elevenoneoneblog.wordpress.com

The introduction of new Orders by the Proposed Legislation in the Domestic Abuse Consultation Launched yesterday will effectively remove the need to prove any wrong doing. All these orders are a dangerous subversion of our legal system because they effectively give a mechanism to imprison without the burden of proving a crime other than not following the rules of the Order!https://www.gov.uk/governme…

We need this dramatic change of stance by the EHRC to be in the National Press. I am waiting for my AM to meet with the commission, as they will not release the details of the decision making process by the expert barrister. I believe there are several more polices I can challenge if I can get this information. The EHRC based their decision on majorities discriminating against minorities. I am hopeful of getting more results. I would also ask you all to look at adult safeguarding boards and their stance on DV, I have managed to get one board to completely take down the page. They used stats that they could not qualify. Its surprising what you can achieve when you query and ask for the source of the information.